1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an arrangement including an answering machine and particularly to an arrangement which maintains a secrecy of message recorded by the answering machine.
2. Background Art
A conventional answering machine has a tape for respsonse to a calling person and a tape for recording a message from the calling person. When there is a telephone call from outside, first, the resposne tape is activated to give a previously recorded message to the calling person, and then the recording tape is activated to record a message from the calling person.
With the conventional answering machine, everyone can hear the recorded message by depressing a "PLAY" button. Therefore, there is no secrecy to the recorded message.
In order to prevent a leakage of the message, a secret-maintaining device might be attached to the answering machine. The secret-maintaining device assigns an ID (identification) to the answering machine and an operator can hear the message recorded in the answering machine only when the operator inputs the ID. However, such a device cannot provide an ideal relation between the recorded message and the secret maintenace, i.e., if the message was recorded into an answering machine of a third party, the secrecy of the message would no longer maintained.